“So where is her husband, Orrend?” Dannyl asked.
“In Capia,” Tayend said. “Mayrie manages everything here. He only comes out to visit once every few months.” He looked at Dannyl and lowered his voice. “They don’t get along very well. Father married her off to someone he decided she’d be suited to. But, as always, the Mayrie he has in his mind is vastly different from the Mayrie she actually is.”
Dannyl nodded. He’d noticed how Mayrie had tensed when her husband’s name had been mentioned by one of the dinner guests.
“Mind you, the man she would have chosen had her marriage not been arranged would have been an even bigger mistake,” Tayend added. “She’ll admit that these days.” He sighed. “I’m still waiting for father to select some appropriately disastrous wife for me.”
Dannyl frowned. “He’d still do that?”
“Probably.” The scholar toyed with his glass, then looked up abruptly. “I’ve never asked before, but do you have someone waiting for you in Kyralia?”
“Me?” Dannyl shook his head. “No.”
“No lady? No sweetheart?” Tayend seemed surprised. “Why not?”
Dannyl shrugged. “I’ve never had time. Too much to do.”
“Like what?”
“My experiments.”
“And?”
Dannyl laughed. “I don’t know. When I think back, I wonder how I managed to fill my time. Certainly not by attending those court gatherings that seem designed for finding a wife or husband. They don’t attract the sort of woman I’d be interested in.”
“So what sort of woman are you interested in?”
“I don’t know,” Dannyl confessed. “Never met one who interested me enough.”
“But what about your family? Haven’t they tried to find you a suitable wife?”
“They did once, years ago.” Dannyl sighed. “She was a nice enough girl, and I planned to go ahead with the marriage just to keep my family happy. But one day I decided I couldn’t do it, that I’d rather remain alone and childless than marry someone I didn’t care for. It seemed crueller to do that to her than refuse the marriage.”
Tayend’s eyebrows rose. “But how did you get out of it? I thought Kyralian fathers arranged matches for their children.”
“Yes, they do.” Dannyl chuckled, “but one privilege that magicians have is the right to refuse an arranged marriage. I didn’t refuse outright, but I found a way to persuade my father to change his mind. I knew the girl admired another young man, so I made sure that certain events occurred that convinced all that he was a better match. I played the part of the disappointed suitor, and everyone felt sorry for me. She is quite happy, I am told, and has had five children since.”
“And your father didn’t arrange another match?”
“No. He decided that—how did he put it?—if I chose to be contrary, then so long as I didn’t scandalize the family by choosing some low-born servant, he’d leave me alone.”
Tayend sighed. “Sounds like you got more out of the affair than being able to choose your wife. My father has never accepted my choices. Partly because I am his only son, so he’s worried there will be no one to inherit after me. But mostly he disapproves of my... well... inclinations. He thinks I am being willful, that I am enchanted with perverse things, as if it’s only about physical gratification.” He frowned, then drained his glass. “It’s not, in case you’re wondering. At least, not for me. There is a... a certainty in me about what is natural and right for me that is as strong as his own certainty about what is natural and right. I’ve read books about eras and places where being a lad was as ordinary as being... I don’t know, a musician or a swordsman. I... I’m ranting, aren’t I?”
Dannyl smiled. “A little.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Dannyl said. “We all need to rant a little now and then.”
Tayend chuckled and nodded. “Indeed, we do.” He sighed. “Well, that’s enough for now.”
They gazed out over the moonlit fields, the silence stretching comfortably between them. Suddenly Tayend drew in a sharp breath. Leaping out of his chair, he hurried inside the house, swaying a little from the effect of the wine. Wondering what had caused his friend’s sudden departure, Dannyl considered going after him, but decided instead to wait and see if he returned.
As he was pouring himself another glass of wine, Tayend appeared again.
“Look at this.”
The scholar spread one of the drawings of the tomb over Dannyl’s lap, then held out a large book. On the pages of the book was a map of the Allied Lands and neighboring countries.
“What am I looking at?” Dannyl asked.
Tayend pointed to a row of glyphs at the top of the tomb drawing. “These say something about a place—the place the woman came from.”
His finger tapped at a particular glyph: a crescent and a hand surrounded by a square with curved corners. “I didn’t know what this meant, but it was familiar, and it took a while before I remembered what it reminded me of. There’s an old book in the Great Library that’s so old the pages crumble into dust if you touch them too roughly. It belonged to a magician many centuries ago, Ralend of Kemori, who ruled part of Elyne before Elyne was one country. Visitors would write their names and titles, and purpose for visiting, in this book—though most of it was in the same handwriting so I suspect a scribe was hired to take the names of those who couldn’t write themselves.
“There was a symbol similar to this on one page. I remember it, because it was a mark made by a stamp, not a pen. And it was red—faded but still visible. The scribe had written ‘King of Charkan’ next to it.
“Now, it’s not unreasonable to think that the woman in the tomb came from the same place—the glyph is so similar to the stamp. But where is this place called Charkan?” Tayend smiled broadly and tapped the map. “This is an old atlas Orrend’s great-grandfather owned. Look closely.”
Dannyl lifted the book out of Tayend’s hands and brought his globe light closer. Near the end of Tayend’s finger was a tiny word and a drawing.
“Shakan Dra,” Dannyl read aloud.
“I might have missed it if it weren’t for that little crescent moon and hand.”
Looking at the rest of the map, Dannyl blinked in surprise. “This is a map of Sachaka.”
“Yes. The mountains. It’s hard to tell from this, but I’d bet twenty gold that Shakan Dra is close to the border. Are you thinking what I’m thinking about a certain unmentioned person making a trip to the mountains some years ago?”
Dannyl nodded. “Yes.”
“I think we have a new destination to explore.”
“We still need to follow our planned route,” Dannyl reminded him. He did not much like the idea of entering Sachaka. Considering its history, he had no idea whether the locals would welcome him. “And Sachaka is not one of the Allied Lands.”
“This place is not far from the border. No more than a day’s travel.”
“I don’t know if we have time.”
“We can be a little late returning to Capia. I doubt anyone would question if we were delayed.” Tayend returned to his chair, and collapsed into it.
“A few days, perhaps.” Dannyl regarded his friend carefully. “But I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to be delayed.”
Tayend shrugged. “No. Why not?”
“Isn’t there someone waiting for your return?”
“No. Unless you mean Librarian Irand? He won’t be concerned if I’m a few days late.”
“Nobody else?”
Tayend shook his head.
“Hmmm.” Dannyl nodded to himself. “So you don’t have your eye on somebody, as you hinted at Bel Arralade’s party.”
The scholar blinked in surprise, then looked at Dannyl sideways. “I’ve got you curious, haven’t I? What if I said that there’s no one waiting for my return because this person doesn’t know of my interest?”